Tether paid $6.3M to firm tied to former Trump crypto adviser Bo Hines: report

Tether has reportedly paid $6.3 million through an arrangement involving a consulting firm co-owned by former White House cryptocurrency adviser Bo Hines, with the first payment arriving while he was helping advance federal stablecoin legislation.

• Tether reportedly paid approximately $6.3 million to a consulting firm partly owned by former White House cryptocurrency adviser Bo Hines.
• The first payment was made in May 2025, while Hines was serving in the Trump administration and helping advance the GENIUS Act.
• Hines retained a one third ownership stake in Nxum, although the firm denied that he was involved in its dealings with Tether during his government service.
• Hines left the White House in August 2025 and subsequently joined Tether, where he took charge of its US stablecoin operations.

According to an October 15 investigation by The Wall Street Journal, the payments were connected to Nxum, a consulting firm Hines co-founded with his father and another business partner.

Hines retained a one-third ownership stake in Nxum while serving as executive director of the White House's digital assets council from January to August 2025.

During that period, he worked on the GENIUS Act, which established federal rules for stablecoin issuers, including Tether, the company behind USDT.

The investigation examined internal documents, Signal messages and blockchain payment records to trace the financial arrangement.

Nxum has denied that Hines was involved in its dealings with Tether during his government service. The firm maintained that he had stepped away from its operations and did not receive money derived from Tether while working in the White House.

Tether's first payment came before the GENIUS Act passed

The commercial arrangement began taking shape in April 2025, when Hines' father and another Nxum partner met Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino in New York.

Marketing entrepreneur Peter Vincer arranged the meeting and subsequently presented Tether with a proposal covering public relations, branding and lobbying activities.

The initial proposal identified Nxum as the company responsible for carrying out the work, according to documents reviewed by the Journal.

A revised agreement eventually went through Vincer's marketing company, Notorious, with the final contract excluding references to lobbying.

Tether agreed to pay $415,000 per month in six-month installments under a contract lasting at least two years.

On May 11, 2025, Tether transferred the first $2.49 million installment through Bitfinex, a cryptocurrency exchange under the same parent company.

Vincer retained $498,000 and forwarded the remaining amount to a wallet associated with Nxum. The funds were subsequently divided among the firm's three partners, according to the payment records.

Two further transfers of $2.49 million each reached Nxum-controlled wallets in December 2025 and April 2026, after Hines had left the White House.

Portions of those payments went to Vincer, while the remaining funds were distributed among the partners.

The investigation calculated that Nxum earned approximately $6.3 million through the arrangement.

Vincer told the Journal that he had served as an intermediary and transferred the contract directly to Nxum after Hines left government.

He disputed the amount he ultimately received, while Nxum rejected his account of the payment disagreement.

Bo Hines pushed for a longer stablecoin compliance period

During negotiations over the GENIUS Act, Hines supported giving cryptocurrency platforms three years to stop offering stablecoins that failed to meet the new federal requirements.

The proposed period was originally 18 months, a shorter timeline favored by some Democratic lawmakers and US-based stablecoin companies.

People familiar with the negotiations told the Journal that Hines encouraged lawmakers to double the compliance period.

The resulting 36-month window gave foreign stablecoin issuers, including Tether, more time before restrictions on noncompliant tokens would apply to US platforms.

The legislation contained a separate pathway allowing foreign stablecoin issuers to operate under approved regulatory jurisdictions.

Critics described the provision as a concession to Tether, although Nxum maintained that the longer compliance period emerged from negotiations involving multiple stakeholders.

The firm argued that Tether could advocate for its preferred regulatory treatment without entering into a financial relationship with Nxum.

Meanwhile, messages reviewed by the Journal showed Hines communicating with his business partners about the legislation while serving in the administration.

In June 2025, as the bill faced opposition from some House Republicans, Hines shared political talking points through a Signal group involving Nxum's partners.

Nxum said those communications concerned information already publicly available and did not amount to participation in the firm's commercial dealings.

President Donald Trump eventually secured support from Republican holdouts, and the GENIUS Act was signed into law on July 18, 2025.

Hines took charge of Tether's US stablecoin business

Hines announced his departure from the White House in August 2025, weeks after the GENIUS Act became law.

On August 19, Tether appointed Hines as strategic adviser to oversee its expansion efforts in the United States, as crypto.news reported at the time.

His responsibilities included developing relationships with policymakers and industry participants as the company prepared to operate under the new regulatory framework.

In September 2025, Tether named Hines CEO of USAT, its planned US-regulated dollar-backed stablecoin.

The company selected Anchorage Digital Bank as the token's issuer and Cantor Fitzgerald to manage its reserves.

Tether subsequently launched USAT in January 2026 as a separate product from USDT, which remains its main international stablecoin.

The USAT product was designed around the GENIUS Act's requirements for reserve backing, regulatory supervision and redemption.

By July 2026, Tether had expanded USAT to Celo, its second supported blockchain after Ethereum.

The Celo deployment enabled native token issuance and redemption, while allowing users to pay network transaction fees with USAT.

At the time, USAT had reached a market capitalization of approximately $185 million.

Tether had separately led a $7 million funding round for Pact Labs, which was developing payroll and payment services using USAT.

Tether's regulatory position remains unresolved

The GENIUS Act's implementation has continued through federal rulemaking, with several requirements for stablecoin issuers still awaiting final regulations.

An August 2026 review of the law's implementation found that federal agencies had missed the July deadline for completing the required rules.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency was targeting November 2026 to finalize its framework.

Tether's international operations face separate questions because USDT is issued by a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands.

The law permits foreign stablecoin issuers to serve American businesses under certain conditions, including a Treasury Department determination that their home jurisdictions provide comparable regulatory oversight.

As of August 2026, the Treasury had not issued such a determination for the British Virgin Islands.

Restrictions on US platforms offering noncompliant stablecoins are scheduled to apply in July 2028.

Separately, the Journal's investigation raised questions about Hines' financial interest in Nxum during his government service.

Cynthia Brown, senior ethics counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told the publication that federal officials generally face restrictions on participating in government matters involving their financial interests.

Nxum maintained that Hines had recused himself from company business and that his ownership stake did not require divestment under the applicable ethics rules.

The White House said it expected administration officials to comply with federal ethics laws. Tether did not respond to the Journal's requests for comment.

The investigation disclosed further financial dealings involving Nxum after Hines entered the private sector.

According to an investor presentation reviewed by the Journal, Nxum had circulated plans under which Tether would acquire a 25% stake in the consulting firm for $56 million.

The firm had proposed selling another 10% to outside investors while its founders would retain 65%.

Nxum was involved in the September 2025 launch of Fellowship PAC, a pro-cryptocurrency political action committee chaired by Tether's head of government affairs, Jesse Spiro.

Federal disclosures showed the PAC had raised at least $11 million from Cantor Fitzgerald and other contributors.

The committee paid more than $6.5 million to Nxum for advertising and related services, according to the records reviewed by the Journal.